By Tony DeFalco, Vice President of International Services and Security Compliance
At last month’s Disabled American Veterans (DAV) conference, attendees delighted in the news about the PACT Act getting signed into law. Formally known as the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act, the statute provides health care exams and care for service-related exposure to toxic materials.
The Veterans Evaluation Services® (VES) team was on hand to discuss how the company supports veterans and service members. In my introduction to the audience, I outlined how VES fits into the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) process for enabling clinicians to perform medical disability exams.
Throughout the conference, the VES team members engaged the leadership of the VA and DAV from which audiences took away a better understanding of how VES supports veterans. Of particular interest was how demand for disability exams will increase as the PACT Act moves toward implementation. VES is prepared to help the VA manage this need on an operational level today, and for the longer term with planning and execution.
For example, the VA knows it must fast track IT modernization and increase its capability for automating parts of the benefits process. Maximus, the parent company of VES, oversees several modernization programs at federal agencies featuring robotic process automation and artificial intelligence. These and related technologies offer the only way to efficiently accommodate the more than six million veterans receiving healthcare every year. While the team at VES and the VA agree that automation cannot take the place of a human reviewing every claim, there are opportunities for improvement to make the claims process more effective. Providing a helpful experience to veterans continues to be the most important measure for everything we do.